Josh Mandel kept afloat by outside cash

There isn’t a Senate candidate in the country who has earned a more consistent string of lousy headlines than Ohio’s Josh Mandel.

Yet the 34-year-old Republican state treasurer continues to defy political gravity, inching increasingly closer to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in polls despite repeated stumbles, the cloud of a campaign finance investigation and a prickly relationship with his home state press corps.

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Behold the post-Citizens United era of unlimited outside spending, where even a blunder-prone candidate can stay in the game if there’s sustained firepower trained against his opponent.

Big-dollar benefactors helped keep Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum afloat in the Republican presidential primary for months longer than they would’ve lasted otherwise. Now Republican Senate candidates are getting their own boost from wealthy outsiders looking to wrest control of the Senate from Harry Reid.

In battleground races across the country, a torrent of outside money is lifting the fortunes of GOP candidates by battering their opponents. In the past two weeks alone, American Crossroads and its affiliate group Crossroads GPS have unleashed $5.7 million to go after Democrats in nine states, doing the dirty work for Republican contenders such as George Allen in Virginia and Sen. Dean Heller in Nevada.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill doesn’t even have a Republican challenger yet — Missouri’s Senate primary isn’t until August. But whoever it is will probably enter the general election with a head of steam, thanks to a barrage of ads slamming McCaskill.

In the Buckeye State, though, Brown has been hit by a blitzkrieg like no other.

The first-term incumbent has been on the receiving end of $8.3 million in outside attacks through last week. The latest batch, an $800,000 Crossroads GPS buy, slices Brown for voting with President Barack Obama “95 percent of the time.”

Crossroads GPS is one of three groups that have already invested more than $1 million apiece against Brown. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading the charge with $3.8 million and the 60+ Association has spent more than $2.3 million.

“I’m not surprised by it, I’m surprised by the amount of it. Nobody saw this much of it coming,” Brown told POLITICO in an interview. “I’ll bet you in Ohio history there hasn’t been that much money spent in all the races by June.”

No senator has been pummeled by a greater amount of third-party money this cycle — and observers on both sides of the aisle agree Mandel’s more than 4-to-1 advantage in outside help has undeniably made the race more competitive.

Even the ambitious challenger can’t deny the impact.

“I think the outside spending on the conservative side has been very effective and has helped tightened the race,” Mandel said in an interview, stressing that the law bars coordination with such groups. “They see he can be beaten.”

Brown goes further, saying the influx has served as a political life preserver for a lightweight contender.

“This race wouldn’t be close at all if it wasn’t for the $8 million,” he said.

Democratic-aligned groups such as Majority PAC, the League of Conservation Voters and the Service Employees International Union have tried to soften the blow, harnessing $1.7 million for spots against Mandel. But Brown is under no illusion there will be parity.

"Josh Mandel, the Republican Ohio treasurer looking to move up to the Senate seat held by Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, appears to have skipped meetings of the state Board of Deposit for mysterious reasons. Mandel, who officially chairs the board, has not attended even one of its 14 monthly meetings since he was elected treasurer. His schedules for those days, provided to The Huffington Post, do not clarify what was more pressing for the young treasurer than attending sessions of a body that oversees billions in state funds. According to the records, Mandel had nothing on his schedule on five different occasions when the board met." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The Headline says it all. We need true campaign finance reform. People from outside the State should not be able to finance any campaign inside siad State. This man should he win is to represent the people of Ohio, yet he will be beholden to interest that lay outside the State.

The Headline says it all. We need true campaign finance reform. People from outside the State should not be able to finance any campaign inside siad State. This man should he win is to represent the people of Ohio, yet he will be beholden to interest that lay outside the State.

Why? What is it about free, unrationed political spech that troubles you?

Conservatives have always thought that only certain people should vote, particularly those who own property. They say that only property owners have a vested interest in the nation.

Conservatives also think that the uneducated should not vote because they don’t understand what is going on.

The poor are typically uneducated because they do not have the luxury of time to study, nor the money to pay for schooling and books and supplies. The poor must work to eat, and going to school is not working to eat.

If the conservative objective of consolidating wealth into fewer and fewer hands continues unabated, and if they are able to further deny formal, quality education to more and more people based on their income, and they are able to fulfill their dreams of only the elite being able to vote, then we WILL end up the way of Europe.

famous for helping to out the identity of a covert CIA agent serving her country

This bogus talking point is so old.

Valrie Plame was a paper-pusher in Langley, NOT a "covert" operative. He employment was well-known, she and her husband even sat for a magizine profile where her employment was prominently noted. Rove was cleared of the false charge you regurgitated. Richard Armitage is acknowledged to be the source of the offending "leak" to Robert Novack.

You need a new line, because it's obvious you only hate Rove due to the fact that he kicks Progressive Democrats' political backsides on a regular and predictable basis.